2. Egypt

The situation in Egypt got awkward for the Obama administration when the military ousted democratically-elected President Mohamed Morsi last July.

The United States responded to the coup (which they refused to officially label a coup) by cutting some military aid to Egypt.

Since then, the military-backed interim government has cracked down on protests and declared Morsi’s party, the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organization. Now, the person best situated to be elected president is Egypt’s army chief, recently promoted to the highest rank of Field Marshal.

The third anniversary of Egypt’s 2011 revolution, which was this past weekend, was marked by bloody clashes in Cairo. At least 49 people were killed and dozens injured, the latest in a pattern of violence that has taken over the country since the ouster of former strongman Hosni Mubarak three years ago.

Tensions between Asia’s largest powers, China and Japan, continue to rise over competing territorial claims on a small set of islands in the East China Sea.

Tokyo and Beijing have been at loggerheads for months over the Senkaku Islands, which Japan now controls. Late last year, China declared an air defense zone aroun the islands, which it calls Diaoyu.

Just last week, China sent three coastguard vessels into the 12-nautical-mile territorial waters near one of the Senkakus.

There’s also the matter of Japan’s Prime Minister Abe sparking regional fury with a visit to a World War II shrine that houses war criminals.

US Secretary of State John Kerry has expressed concern over the territorial row, and criticized China for its air defense zone. But beyond that there’s been little sign of any pivot to Asia.

4. Iraq

Iraqis gather at the site of a car bomb in central Baghdad, on Jan. 15, 2014. (ALI AL-SAADI AFP/Getty Images)

Iraq is witnessing the worst violence since 2006 and 2007, when the country was on the verge of all-out civil war.

Earlier this month, Al Qaeda-linked militants took control of Fallujah and Ramadi, cities in Iraq’s Anbar province. Hundreds of US soldiers lost their lives fighting an insurgency in those same cities in 2004.

Obama kept his mention of Iraq vague in Tuesday’s speech:

While we’ve put Al Qaeda’s core leadership on a path to defeat, the threat has evolved, as Al Qaeda affiliates and other extremists take root in different parts of the world. In Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Mali, we have to keep working with partners to disrupt and disable these networks.

As the United States and South Korea prepare to hold a series of joint military drills in late February, the hermit kingdom is again ramping up propaganda.

Kim Jong Un has threatened nuclear war over the exercises, and last month vowed to attack South Korea “mercilessly” and “without notice” in a message delivered via fax.

American Kenneth Bae has been detained in the North for more than a year. And last month, the country held an 85-year-old Korean War veteran from California for weeks for alleged crimes during the conflict.

The West has more to do with the Hong Kong protest movement than it would like us to know. It’s the ugly face of Washington’s long-standing foreign policy directed at destabilizing one of its long-standing economic foes: China.

The same media that has spent years dragging Assange’s name through the mud is now engaging in a blackout on his treatment. If you are waiting for corporate media pundits to defend freedom of the press, you’re going to be disappointed.

Think about who gets rich off of the Venezuela regime-change agenda. It’s the same people that said we had to invade Iraq in order to prevent nuclear apocalypse. It’s the same people who said the world would stop turning on its axis if we didn’t carpet bomb Libya and Syria.